Learner guide
How Pronunciation Lab works
Use this guide when you want to know what the labels mean, what is reviewed, when feedback is available, and what your saved progress does — without needing to understand the technical system behind it.
What is a Sound Lab?
A Sound Lab is a short guided lesson for one sound, sound contrast or connected-speech pattern. The main curriculum teaches General American English and keeps every lab open, so the recommended order helps you without locking anything.
- 15 Sound Labs in the current path
- Recommended order, open access
- Completion records a finished guided visit, not mastery
What happens in the six stages?
Each lab moves from understanding the sound to using it in connected speech. The same sequence repeats so you always know what comes next.
- See it — understand the mouth action
- Words — stabilize the target
- Contrast — keep nearby sounds distinct
- Phrase — keep control as words connect
- Sentence — use the target at a natural pace
- Transfer — return to a reviewed connected-speech example
What does reviewed reference mean?
A reviewed reference is model audio that has passed the project’s reference checks and human review. When that label is shown, you can treat the audio as the model for that practice item. Generated or draft items are kept separate and are not silently presented as reviewed references.
When is pronunciation feedback available?
You can record, listen back and retry throughout the Sound Labs. Automated pronunciation feedback appears only where Pronunciation Lab has an explicitly reviewed feedback check. At present, that calibrated feedback is available in the /θ/ versus /s/ transfer exercise; the other labs support guided listening and self-comparison without pretending to diagnose your pronunciation.
- Feedback is optional
- A feedback result may suggest practice but never routes you automatically
- Pronunciation Lab does not produce one overall pronunciation score
What does Finish mean?
Finish records that you completed a guided Sound Lab visit. It is deliberately separate from evidence about a particular sound. Progress can therefore show curriculum completion, practice activity, stable targets and review suggestions without collapsing them into one score.
See how Progress is organized →How is progress saved?
You can start without an account. In that mode, supported progress stays with this browser. Signing in lets durable progress follow your account across browsers and devices and is required for the current external-service pronunciation feedback allowance.
See account and usage details →What stays private or temporary?
Recordings are temporary unless a feature explicitly says otherwise. Product analytics is first-party and does not store your text, recordings, pronunciation evidence, account identity, IP address, user-agent or referrer. Analytics never becomes pronunciation evidence or changes your learning path.
What belongs under Tools?
Tools are optional explorations outside the main Sound Lab curriculum: custom-text practice, the detailed articulation workbench and experimental speech-generation/listening tools when those experiments are publicly enabled. Using a Tool does not replace or fake Sound Lab progress.
Open Tools →What English variety is taught?
The guided curriculum currently teaches General American English. Experimental regional listening or speech-generation tools are clearly separated from that teaching path and do not change the pronunciation variety used by the Sound Labs.